Easy Minestrone

A delicious and classic Italian easy vegan minestrone soup packed with vegetables, beans, and pasta. For my version I’ve used cabbage, courgette, celery, carrot, and spinach. It of course starts with the base of a soffritto, which involves slowly cooking onions, carrots, and celery to release a delicious aroma used for the base of many sauces and stews in Italian recipes. From there we’ve added our vegetables, which you can adapt according to the seasons, along with the protein from the beans and carbohydrates from the pasta.

Start by dicing all of your vegetables into small chunks. Then you can begin with your soffritto by frying off the onions, celery and carrot in the pan until soft and caramelised. You can really take your time with this to add more depth of flavour, so feel free to cook for 20 minutes or more until they are totally caramelised. Next, add in the garlic and courgettes and cook for another 10 minutes.

Now you can mix in the savoy cabbage, tomatoes, stock, chilli flakes, and dried herbs. Then, bring all of these ingredients to a boil, add in your mini pasta and return to a simmer to cook for 10 minutes. My pasta of choice was macaroni but other great options are ditalini, small shells, and orzo. If you’re gluten free, opt for a gltuen free pasta, or even potato or rice!